Dalglish: I´m happy with Carroll

Liverpool boss Kenny Dalglish defended striker Andy Carroll after he scored just his sixth goal of the season in their 6-1 FA Cup rout of Brighton.

Liverpool put the Championship club to the sword at Anfield, with goals from Carroll, Martin Skrtel and Luis Suarez guiding them into the quarter-finals of the FA Cup, aided by three Brighton own-goals.

Dalglish said Carroll would continue to have his support as he battled back to top form.

“We’ve always been supportive of him (Carroll) and always will be,” Dalglish said.

“I’ll always be really supportive of any player that comes to this football club. So it does not matter what his name is, and we’ll be the judge of whether we’re happy or unhappy.”

“And as we’ve said before, we’ve been delighted with everybody that’s come in here, since we’ve come into the club. And I think there are seven or eight names that can go along with that as well.”

“As we’ve said before, we’ll stand as a squad, we’ll stand and be counted as a squad and I don’t think they’ve done too badly so far this year.”

Despite the size of the margin, Dalglish said Brighton had been very competitive.

“It was more difficult than the score-line would suggest,” he said.

“Brighton played very well against us at the AMEX (Stadium) and the League Cup competition (Liverpool’s 2-1 win on September 21).”

“For half an hour, 40 minutes here they were very good as well.”

“I think we deserved to win and go through. Whether the score is a true reflection of how the game went is open to conjecture, but we’re happy to be through.”